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Friday, 21 April 2017

The Science Of Happiness (Not A Book Review)

I just completed reading The Science of Happiness by Stefan
Klein and first chapter into the book I decided that this needs to be stuff of
common knowledge. We spend our whole lives seeking happiness. Almost everything
we do is to attain a sense of satisfaction and joy. No one ever wants to be
sad. Yet we put dismal amount of effort to actually be happy. We keep expecting
good things to happen to us without realizing that “good” is objective and
happiness is more a state-of-mind than a state-of-life.

This book puts forward the neuroscience behind many of our
concepts about happiness, sadness, satisfaction, love and desire. Translating
everything into layman language I am going to interpret some general concepts
about happiness that many of you might already know to be too ingrained in our
minds that we forget the logical background of these, taking them for granted
and preventing ourselves to actually follow them in our daily lives.

We have a happiness system.

This means that happiness is not
simply the absence of sadness, but it is something to be practiced despite the
continuous struggles of life. Adult brain continues to change. Every time we
gain new experiences, like reading a book, indulging in a hobby or going on a
trip, new connections are forged in our network of nerve cells. What this
implies is that no one is born a “Sunday’s child”, we can all learn to channel our energy. Connections in our brain determine how we feel and they are more
easily formed in childhood. Genes too affect our ability to be happy, but only
as much as destiny affects our life. WE CAN CHANGE IT.

Since environment shapes
an organism, brain can reprogram itself.

In order to control our feelings, we must first be aware of
them. We feel a lot of emotions without analyzing the why or how of it. It is
same as saying you have to accept your weaknesses to conquer it. Emotions are
unconscious and beyond our control, but feelings, the realization of these
emotions, can well be manipulated. But manipulating the brain is quite a task.
The “All Is Well” theory actually works, but it takes skill and continued
monitoring of emotions to deceive the master. Human beings don’t understand
reason, they understand feelings. How many times have you taken a decision
impulsively somehow knowing it is harmful? It is thus important to know the
root of all our feelings and then reason with ourselves.

Positive feelings can extinguish negative ones and
vice-versa.

However, they sometimes occur together. In such times we have to choose
which side we allow to take over.

The feedback system of pleasure and stress are connected.
The expectation of pleasure can work in direct opposition to the things that
are upsetting us. If you’re having a bad day at college, the pretext of going
home and watching your favorite TV show can lighten up your mood. We can use
this to our benefit in a lot of situations. Rewarding yourself with a cupcake
after two hours of study can increase your productivity. Little joys that don’t
usually matter a lot can still get the expectation system working and help ooze
stress.

There are specific areas in the brain that control
negative and positive emotions, thus reinforcing the idea that both can occur
at the same time. When we control our negative feelings we increase the
activity on the left side of our brain that is responsible for positive
emotions. This sets a chain reaction in motion and we eventually learn to
harbor positivity and shun negativity. Slowly, happiness can become a habit.
But if we keep indulging in self-doubt and negativity, sadness can also become
a habit.

Having focus can help us practice control over almost all our
habits.

For example, if you have a bad direction sense, paying attention only to the routes instead of the song playing in your car or the argument breaking
out next to it, will help you memorize the routes slowly but
definitely.

Similarly, when we focus on pain, the changes in the cerebral cortex
make us still more sensitive to suffering. The perception of pain is atleast
partially learned.

Passions and Desires

In nature they are all good and we only
have to avoid misuse and excess. That can happen only by becoming familiar. Animals
experience emotions just like human beings but we have the added skill set
required to resist our emotions and desires whether due to family pressure or
just so that we can focus our time on our careers.

Human beings are never satisfied.

What we want only makes us
more hungry. There is an expectation system mechanism which releases excitement
at the sight of something we want. However when this process is repeated over a
certain time span, the expectation system gets used to the object and we want
more of it or something else apart from it. Stronger stimulation is then
required to activate the expectation system. This explains the theory that
happiness and satisfaction are two very different but correlated terms. It is
possible to be happy yet unsatisfied and vice-versa.

“But when we are open to different pleasures instead of stronger ones, the sense of delight is restored, and when the contrast is well chosen, our enjoyment is even more intense than before.”

There is a Robinson Crusoe theory, wherein writing down the
good and bad things in our life side by side makes us realize that it could
have been worse, that it is better to hold on to what we have and try to be
satisfied.

These are all concepts and techniques to tame the mind. However, happiness is different for all of us. Learning the science behind it can give us a better perspective but we still need to work towards it.

"There are 6 billion people on earth, and there are 6 billion paths to happiness"

7 comments:

Woah!!! This is mind blowing! I've read many of the things before but not in this way. Very well written. Although, people who are not interested in science would probably don't like reading the whole article. But that doesn't matter. Keep writing :)

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